| 1. | Which country's time do you set in the Space Station? |
| We use Greenwich Mean Time. Which is roughly halfway between the time zone of Houston and Moscow. | |
| 2. | What is the temperature inside and outside the cabin of the space station? |
| Inside it's a very comfortable 22 degrees. Outsides it's very uncomfortable. Very, very hot if you're in the sunlight. Of maybe about 150 degrees. Outside. In the shade, it's very, very cold ...maybe 150 degrees minus. | |
| 3. | Do you feel zero gravity is convenient? Does zero gravity change the intensity of odors? |
| Well, zero gravity is both very very fun because you can fly inside the Space Station. But sometimes it can be inconvenient because things fly away or you can lose things if you do not attach them. For instance, if you are holding something on the ground and you need to use your hands. You can just put it on the table. Here you can't do that. Try putting things down it just flies away. So you have to attach it to something. As far as our sense of smell, odor appears to be very much the same. I think, sense of taste is pretty much the same. Things still sure taste very good. I still enjoy dinner here. I still enjoy the smell of my food. | |
| 4. | What do you do in your free time? |
| In my free time, my favorite activity is actually looking out the window at the Earth. But one of the other things I like to do is we actually have a very, very small electric piano up here. And I like to play that sometimes, too. | |
| 5. | Cosmonaut Gagarin said, "The Earth was blue". How do you describe the Earth seeing from space? |
| Well, the Earth is only blue over the ocean, although most of the Earth is covered by water. But the land is sort of a brown color. But depends on where you're looking at. For instance, the deserts of Australia and Africa are red. The mountains are white because they have snow on them....Mt. Fuji. I can't see the snow up there. But I can see a white spot there. Cities look gray. When I look at some of the larger cities and they look gray. That's because of the buildings and the concrete and the roads. | |
| 6. | What were your most joyful and saddest experiences as an astronaut? |
| Well, the most joyful experience is just being in space. And, looking down and watching the Earth. I find that incredibly, incredibly joyful. The saddest experience I've had as an astronaut would be about 4 months ago when the Space Shuttle Columbia ...ah,...had an accident and seven of my very, very good friends died. | |
| 7. | Can you take a bath on the space station? How does it like? |
| Actually we cannot take a bath because we do not have a shower or a bath up here. The way we clean up. We have ..some soap solution and shampoo -- which we have inside bottles -- and spread that on yourself very, very carefully. And you use a towel to wipe it off. | |
| 8. | How big is Japan, looking from the Space Station? Can you see our Amagasaki city from there? |
| Well, your city is probably a tiny bit too small to see. But I see some of the larger cities, for example Osaka. Definitely, Tokyo. And Yokohama. The big cities. But some of the smaller cities are a bit hard to find. | |
| 9. | What would you do if you suffered from a sudden incurable disease on the space station? |
| Well, if we had a medical emergency up here, we have a way to get home fairly quickly. We have a Soyuz spacecraft here at the space station. And Yuri and I would get into that spacecraft and go home. From the time we decided to leave until the time we landed would not be very long. Less than half a day. You can call that fairly quickly. | |
| 10. | Why do you dare to travel in space with risk? |
| Well, I think all the great things that you can do in life require a risk. And, this is one of them. I think that it worth the amount of risk for us to explore space. | |
| 11. | Do aliens exist in outer space? Have you ever seen them? |
| Well, I've never seen any...any examples or clues of that there may be life out there. I would certainly love to someday...And I would love to be the person who discovered life someplace else. But, thus far we have never seen it. | |
| 12. | Could you tell me how to use the toilets on the International Space Station? |
| It's like on an airline, if you've ever used one of those. If you've ever taken a trip on a large airplane. The bathroom inside there is very small...size. And it's the air pressure which pulls the waste down inside the toilet. | |
| 13. | Have you seen garbage in space? |
| Well, I've never seen any garbage in space. But I have seen other satellites. For instance, a couple of weeks ago we came close enough to an Italian research satellite. You could actually see it. It was only about 20 kilometers away from us. | |
| 14. | How do you feel about floating under weightless conditions? |
| Floating is a wonderful thing. I love to float. I feel like a...bit like a bird flying in the air. Like a bird. And I'll miss that when I get back down on the ground. | |
| 15. | Do you miss your family during your mission? |
| Well, yes, I do miss my family. But I do have regular e-mail with them. I can send them e-mail and they can send e-mail to me. And I do contact them regularly. | |
| 16. | Is the Earth really round? |
| From where we are, we can definitely see that the Earth is a big, round sphere. | |
| 17. | Could you tell me how you sleep on the Space Station? |
| It's a good question. And, you know, that we float here. So we can't just lay down in a bed. We actually have sleeping bags.....[transmission degrades permanently] | |
| 18. | Can you wash your clothes on the Space Station? |
| 19. | What do you eat in space? Do space meals taste good? |
| 20. | What do you do for entertainment on the Space Station? |